He pays attention. Mages can tap the sources and use that energy do magic? He sends with a shrug. Or do you want something more complicated?

I suppose it's not likely I'm going to learn anything useful to me if you do. Oh well.

Not really. No.

Well, he was completely honest there were small magics, and supposedly a conduit could find their way here. But Arion didn't know how to teach the first and couldn't really help with the later.

I think I will send you on your way. I need to start working on a new clock to replace the one you just bought, after all.

I won't keep you busy any longer then. He breaks off contact gives a small head bow before walking away.

Magic is weird.

"Have a nice day, sir, enjoy your new timekeeping solution."

"Thank you!" He says over his shoulder.

He will walk around town for a small bit but then take flight (obeying the relevant customs) and finds his way back to the portal.

The town is fairly bustling. Most people give him lots of space, though a few more try to trade with him for technology he doesn't actually have.

He politely waves those off. And starts tracing his way back.

He can get clearance to take off easy enough. They don't want to annoy the flying visitor. Though they ask him to get well away from other ships before doing any maneuvering.

Does he have a good sense of direction for the portal? He might need it.

He never had need to put into practice, but he does have a good sense of direction. He can also tap the sky in code and get an estimate of distance and direction that way.

He'll find his friends and their portal-island only a little ways away from where he expected it to be, then.

And when Arion tries to sneak past the portal vines will emerge from the other side and grab his ankle. His older half-brother is there to berate his recklessness.

Arion will take the heat.

Above them, near the dome, a tiny nugget of magical potential is lazily floating around, waiting to find a suitable host. There aren't that many, the world is too full of hosts and none of the potential hosts stand out over the others.

Then it finally detects the potential hosts on the other side of the portal and it feels out for connections. There is someone. One connection is tenuous and fickle, but there.

The conduit flies through the portal unnoticed and then bonds itself to the individual.

Something's not right.

- Glass and mirrors, prisms, projectors and illusions, light tangling up on itself, inside her, in spirals of every angle -

She carefully puts down the soldering iron and wire and looks toward the wide, bright expanse of sky. Looks up toward the sun. 

She's imagining it, right? She's tired, and daydreaming. Why does she think she can just - reach out and...

...She imagines herself as a prism, seeing the light, letting it into her so it will change.

And the light flows into her. The prism becomes a vessel for brightness and heat, holding onto it or maybe being ignited by it. The essence of the sun is somewhere inside her, but not anywhere she can point to, just there. Reflecting and refracting like it's trying to escape.

A tiny amount of it does escape and motes of light form around her, tiny, barely noticeable to the human eye, but she can tell the intricate nuances of their brightness, shapes and color through a sense that she will realize is perceiving light without using sight.

Really? Really?

Is magic contagious, or is she having a psychotic episode? That's the question. She looks over herself for needle marks, tries to remember if she ate anything funny or felt strange today... Not really, no.

She doesn't want to deal with this right now. She lets go of the light, tries to send it away.

The swirl of light, heat and energy inside her expands and disperses, or maybe it would be correct to say it irradiates? With the result that the room goes blindingly bright and hot enough to make her clothing briefly uncomfortable.

Then it's gone.

The place where that light was feels a bit hollow and cold. Now that she knows what the light is like.

She could have started a fire. This room is one of the better places for that sort of risk, but still. Terrified, she resolves not to use any magic. A thought that would have been impossible or insane half a day ago. Shouldn't be hard... Right?

...It's still there, that new sensation. The chill is annoying, a bit unnerving. She doesn't try to refill it. She turns the soldering iron back on and works on her project.

She can't focus. After a while, she puts everything away and goes to warm up outside, not really paying attention. (It's nice to be warm...) And she picks up some kind of - energy - again. Augh. I have to find that guy again.

She hikes up to the port authority and asks about the strange visitor and learns that he left ages ago. Fantastic. She steadfastly refuses to touch or think about that niggling feeling in the back of her head for the rest of the day and goes to bed anxious.

She, mercifully, does not cause any spontaneous magic in her sleep. The void inside her does not really diminish but it can become a background thing like a shackle around someone's ankles.

Irate and tired, she tries to go about her business the next day just the same. It doesn't really go well. She avoids sunlight - whenever she's in it, she reflexively absorbs a little into that ball of magic what the hell sitting in her gut. 

She makes a few scheduled deliveries, jobs she'd already done, but soon retires back to that secure workshop and... Experiments. With a bucket of water handy. That feeling of trapping light like a prism, does she have to be standing in the light? She can emit light and heat... Controlled amounts of both those things?

She does not have to be standing in the light, but being on the shade near a illuminated area still lets her tap into the light and trap it. But the amount of "light" she taps into is proportional to how much light she is exposed to, as well obstacles in the way. Being indoors with closed windows and in the shade gives her barely-noticeable levels of "trapped light". So little that if she tries to use it for anything she will not be sure if the effect is just her imagination or just very tepid.

If she tries she can controllable create the light and heat of a torch, floating as a white ball right in front of her. She can even feel the light and heat as distinct actions. One goes metaphorically that way, and the other metaphorically this way. Or maybe is more like different fingers in her hand. There is a noticeable lack of that overwhelming sensation from when she used magically accidentally. Not just because she is not feeling it, but she is feeling its absence. It's mild, but noticeable while she is focusing on magic.

She really shouldn't be doing any of this. Randomly experimenting with - well, it sounds a bit better if she thinks of it as a piece of tech that attached itself to her, not magic. A bit. But it's like thinking about her breathing. As soon as she stops focusing on not doing anything, she finds herself drawing in more of the light.

Maybe if she absorbs and doesn't use it for a while it'll go to a nice, ignoreable medium? Not cold, not warm, just there.

It stays there alright when she is just trying to hold onto it.

....after a while it appears to be very slowly diminishing.

Well the goal is to make it so she doesn't worry about starting random fires and can just ignore it. This isn't helping directly, but at least she's getting more used to it? She's only accidentally used some a couple of times.